I agree with Fuseleer it is possible to have temporary partition tolerance, which is in essense what Iota is doing (but I am contemplating that it can be done another way with blocks that I think might have superior qualities). But you still need a global longest chain rule to resolve interpartition activity and thus no unbounded partition tolerance (only temporary). Fuseleer, CfB, and myself all discovered the same conceptual insight.
P.S. I edited my prior post. CfB I also edited the post you replied to.
Sure - partition tolerance I was referring to is the extreme case where an island of connectivity emerges, separate from the main consensus group. Of course there must be a way to objectively merge the two groups together should they be united, and bitcoin's longest chain rule is as good as any model I have heard of.